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‘Blasphemous’ sign a chuckle

This tempest in a teapot gave me a much-needed morning smile. But really, does a protest bearing 33 signatures merit front-page coverage?

True, some religious zealots might interpret the slogan “negatively,” but the same could have been said about the popular patriotic 1942 song, “Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition.”

This rigid Catholicism reminds me of my mother. Long ago, she used to gather her brood around her after supper during the month of October to say the rosary. The word from Catholic pulpits then was, “The family that prays together, stays together.” For a boy, it was purgatory mumbling all those Hail Marys while listening to my chums playing outside in the street.

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A few years later my mother became very upset when a local bowling alley erected a sign, “The family that bowls together, stays together.” It too, she felt, bordered on blasphemy.

I never had the courage to tell her that I would have preferred bowling with her and my siblings instead of praying. Amen.

Garry Burke, Coldwater

Just one more example of the double standard that exists in Canadian society. Someone complains about a builder making fun of his beliefs, and he is told to “lighten up.” And yet, how fast do you think the builder would have been forced to apologize if it had insulted the LGBT community? Faster than you can say “hypocrisy.”

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